Wall Street Stays Sluggish

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Wall Street Stays Sluggish

NEW YORK – Technology stocks sagged in early afternoon trading Thursday and stayed there as investors shifted cash into automotive and bank shares, rallying behind individual names amid a lack of more broad-based, sector-wide news.

Trading was light, extending a series of sluggish sessions as the lure of summer months pulls players away from the market, analysts said. Stocks should hover in this trading range until volume picks up to ignite a sustainable rally.

"Something that has been very characteristic of this market is that it is hard to find any thread," said Trude Latimer, independent market strategist in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 7 points to 10,777 – holding onto gains in slow action. The Dow dropped 164 points on Wednesday to end a four-day rally.

Broader measures of the market eased in choppy trading. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 10 points to 1,437.

"You're seeing the two-thirds of the market that is not technology start to gain some strength at the same time as the other is losing its leadership," said Richard Cripps, chief market strategist at Legg Mason Wood Walker.

But he noted that trading was choppy.

"We're going nowhere. We're going sideways," he said. "Obviously, the catalyst for higher prices is some kind of conviction by investors that interest rates aren't going to be going up much more than they already expect."

The New York Stock Exchange saw just 523.5 million shares trade hands by early afternoon while the Nasdaq logged volume of 801.8 million shares.

While inflation, interest rates, and corporate earnings ebbed somewhat in their influence on the market on Thursday, brokerage research and news from individual companies grabbed the spotlight.

Selling also swept the shares of merger partners WorldCom Inc. and Sprint Corp., two telecommunications giants that are the subject of news reports detailing possible U.S. government rejection of their mega-merger.